If you’re new to Magic: The Gathering, and want to get a better understanding of the game, one of the first things you need to understand is mana. This is the energy that you use to cast spells, activate your abilities and summon the creatures within your deck. This is why it is so important to understand: mana is fundamental to building your deck, playing the game and ultimately, defeating your opponent. With this in mind, here’s a quick explanation of how Mana works, and how to manage your mana during a game.
What is mana?
In MTG, mana is the magical energy that comes from the land. Essentially, it acts as a currency; you’ll use it to pay the cost of casting your cards. Every card has its required mana cost in the upper right corner. This tells you how much and which type of mana is required to cast the card.
Types of mana
There are five different colours of mana in MTG. Each one matches a specific land type. For example, white mana is produced by plains, blue is produced by islands, black is produced by swamps, red by mountains and green by forests. It can also be further classified by symbol on cards which defines what mana it makes.
However, there is also a colourless mana. While some cards provide colourless mana, all colours are allowed to contribute to paying these costs.
How to produce mana
The simplest way to produce mana is when you play a land card and tap it. Every basic land tap gives you one mana of its colour. However, there are also some non-basic lands. These can provide you with multiple mana colours, or they may give you additional abilities.
Additionally, some other cards such as enchantments, creatures and artefacts can also give you more mana. As well as providing additional sources of mana, they can fix it to make sure that you have the right colours, or even accelerate the rates at which your mana is produced.
Spending mana
When casting a spell or activating an ability, you will have to pay the mana cost. You will do this by tapping the sources of your mana such as lands. This is added to your mana pool. The pool is a virtual place where you track what mana you have available. It’s important to keep track of this carefully.
Once you have paid the cost of casting a spell or activating an ability, the spell or ability goes onto the stack. This is a zone where players can respond to your cast with other abilities or spells.
How to manage mana
There are various ways to ensure that you have sufficient mana to see out your game.
● Build a balanced mana base that gives you sufficient sources to consistently cast your spells. This also includes how many lands are there and what colour they are.
● Make sure you understand the colour requirements of your deck to allow you to cast your key cards.
● Think about mana ramp. This can be useful if you wish to play expensive cards. It can help accelerate the production of mana.
Hopefully, you’ve got a better idea of mana, its costs and how to preserve and use it wisely. Being able to manage mana correctly will significantly impact your performance during a game, and your chances of winning. For more tips on how to manage mana, why not take a look at the strategies of some of the professional players? Many of them have made an art form out of using, accelerating and strategising their mana to ensure they overpower their opponents. Watching how this works will help you better understand how to use mana within your own game.
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